J.T. Ledbetter: “If my sainted Irish grandmother had seen this poem, ‘Grandmother,’ she would have walloped me, because she was too busy feeding family and field hands on our hard-scrabble farm in southern Illinois to ever die in such a quiet and stuffy manner—what with biscuits and gravy to fix, fried chicken, pies to bake before the men hunched over their dinners, never looking up, assuming she was still alive.”